Six Months and Counting

It’s been two weeks since we submitted our formal application for permanent residency, so this morning we called our case manager. He said our application hadn’t been rejected by the centralized document reception group, which is an acknowledgement that all the basic components were there, but he hadn’t seen the file yet. When asked when he might be able to tell us more, he said to call back in a month. Yikes.

We’ve been here six months today; it’s pretty amazing how fast we’ve grown accustomed to our new home. And it really does feel like home now. At least in the day-to-day sense. A couple weeks ago we rented “I, Robot,” a run-of-the-mill Hollywood movie, but set in a very cool, futuristic-but-totally-identifiable Windy City. My knee-jerk pride of place reaction left little doubt that my kinda town, Chicago is. Although my heartstrings are tugged even harder when I think about Seattle. And, while I never fell in love with Philadelphia, I made some great friends there, so I’ll always have fond associations with the City of Brotherly Love. I really have got to thank my lucky stars: I’ve lived in some wonderful places.

During the past several years we’ve moved around enough that I’m getting used to getting used to new places. I was hoping to be able to pinpoint the moment when a new place feels like home, but I couldn’t catch it this time, either. When we came back after our holiday trip, I noticed that our townhouse really felt like home for the first time; that was just past the three-month mark. Sometime since then I stopped feeling like a stranger in a strange land. I not only don’t get lost anymore, I frequently tell tourists where to go.

The faces at my grocery store and my gym are familiar, and I know some of my neighbors and all of the neighborhood cats. It helps, of course, that things here really aren’t that strange, suntans at Christmas and pumpkins at Easter aside. Not having any significant language or cultural barriers to overcome has made it a pretty easy transition.

Now if we can just get NZIS to hurry itself along . . .

Cheers,
Sandie